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Is memory vested in the faculty by which we perceive and
learn? Or does it reside in the faculty by which we set things
before our minds as objects of desire or of anger, the passionate
faculty?
This will be maintained on the ground that there could scarcely
be both a first faculty in direct action and a second to remember
what that first experiences. It is certain that the desiring
faculty is apt to be stirred by what it has once enjoyed; the
object presents itself again; evidently, memory is at work; why
else, the same object with the same attraction?
But, at that, we might reasonably ascribe to the desiring faculty
the very perception of the desired objects and then the desire
itself to the perceptive faculty, and so on all through, and in
the end conclude that the distinctive names merely indicate the
function which happens to be uppermost.
Yet the perception is very different from faculty to faculty;
certainly it is sight and not desire that sees the object; desire
is stirred merely as a result of the seeing, by a transmission;
its act is not in the nature of an identification of an object
seen; all is simply blind response [automatic reaction].
Similarly with rage; sight reveals the offender and the passion
leaps; we may think of a shepherd seeing a wolf at his flock, and
a dog, seeing nothing, who springs to the scent or the sound.
In other words the desiring faculty has had the emotion, but the
trace it keeps of the event is not a memory; it is a condition,
something passively accepted: there is another faculty that was
aware of the enjoyment and retains the memory of what has
happened. This is confirmed by the fact that many satisfactions
which the desiring faculty has enjoyed are not retained in the
memory: if memory resided in the desiring faculty, such
forgetfulness could not be.
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